Category: TechBlog

Charm City Networks Co-Owner Chris Whong spoke during the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance‘s Data Day last Friday, presenting a few examples of what is possible when combining civic data with 3D GIS extrusion tools, such as ESRI’s ArcGlobe and ArcScene. The Prezi presentation is embedded below, for those who wish to view it. Contact us for more information about GIS and Spatial Data Services. BNIA Mapping on Prezi

This map was created using TIGER line shape files and American Factfinder Data for New York City.

This paper was written in May 2012 for Intelligent Cities, a Master of Urban Planning Elective Course at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service.  The first paragraph is presented below, the rest of the paper can be downloaded as a PDF. Crucial to the idea of smart cities is a municipality’s ability to quickly move information across a network. In recent years, some cities have developed and installed publicly-owned municipal broadband networks to facilitate the flow of their data, many of which serve double-duty as a low-cost internet service provider for residents and businesses. This approach considers internet access as a public utility, an infrastructure investment for the […]

What can you do with Open Data?  Make awesome maps, of course!  This map was created using Baltimore’s Open Data for 311 Calls.  Each call has a street address associated with it, which was geocoded and then spatially joined with BNIA’s shapefile for Baltimore Neighborhoods.  This is simply counting the number of 311 requests by neighborhood, but much more is possible when you drill down to the specific type of request, whether requests are still open, etc.    

This map shows Median Household Income by census tract for the Baltimore-Towson Metropolitan Statistical Area.  The data was pulled from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Factfinder site, and joined with Tiger shape files.  Each tract is extruded and color coded based on its Median Household Income. A sharp contrast can be seen between Baltimore City and its surrounding suburbs.  Significant high-income areas can be seen in Towson/Timonium/Hunt Valley to the north, and Columbia/Clarksville/Ellicott City to the west.

This map shows median income by census tract in Baltimore City, using 2010 census data. Each tract is both color coded and extruded (elevated) above the surface of the map based on its Median Income score. I chose not to add too much text so you can clearly see the spatial pattern jumping out at you.  The Downtown communities of Locust Point, Federal Hill, Fells Point, Mount Vernon and Canton stick out in the central part of the city, and the wealthy suburban areas of Roland Park and Mount Washington form the summit of a “wealth tower” to the north.  West Baltimore and East Baltimore (Hopkins) can also clearly be […]

It can be tough to keep track of the dozens of emails we receive each day, and important messages can easily be lost in the more routine emails the inundate our inboxes.  In Gmail or Google Apps, you can create an email filter to automatically “Label” or categorize messages, and have them bypass your inbox.   For this TechBlog Post, I am going to focus on two categories of email I receive a lot of each day:  First, Groupon, Living Social, and Google Offers.  I don’t want to disable these notifications, but I do want them to bypass my inbox where I can review them later.  Second, my school’s listserve, […]